We Told Six Lies(63)

A hard shove toward the waiting patrol car.

“You have the right to an attorney.”

Words of warning shouted at my mother, who is racing toward me.

“If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.”

Door opening, a hand guiding my head down, leather seats stinking of piss and sour vomit.

“Do you understand the rights I have just read to you?”

She looks like a nice woman. Good laugh lines around her mouth.

“Fuck you,” I say.

She smiles, and I feel like the criminal they believe I am.

My dad runs toward the car, his finger waving in people’s faces. He tries to tell me something, but the cop slams my door closed. Thank God for that.

The cop gets in the driver’s seat, and a man slides in on the passenger side. Other police officers, maybe five of them, get in different cars and pull away. Man, I must be dangerous if it takes this many to bring me in. I wonder if they drew straws at the station to see who would get to cuff me. I like to think when the woman won, she pretended to celebrate but secretly dreaded doing it.

I need to know what the police have on me.

I tap on the plastic that divides me from the cops up front. The guy turns around, and the woman looks in her rearview mirror.

“Where are Detectives Hernandez and Tehrani?” I ask.

The man stares at me for a moment longer and then turns back around.

I grow frustrated. My cops would have answered me. They would tell me what’s going on.

I realize that’s bad—that I’ve developed a sense of camaraderie with police officers who in no way have my best interest at heart.

“Am I going to jail?” I ask.

The word strikes fear through my body. For some strange reason, my terror isn’t from a fear of being caged, but rather the fear of growing smaller. Of not being able to lift, to grow. I’ll shrivel to half my size. I won’t be able to protect myself. I will become a target.

When we get to the station, the female officer grabs my arm and hauls me out. She’s stronger than she looks. I respect that about her. I wonder what she’s like in bed. I wonder what the hell is wrong with me.

The woman leads me to the same office I was questioned inside of a few days ago. I see the girl who led me out the one time. Her mouth turns downward like she’s disappointed to see me here again.

You and me both.

The woman puts me into a chair and re-cuffs my hands so they’re in front of me. The male officer stands close by in case I try something.

Will I try something?

Yeah, I might.

When the two officers leave and Detective Tehrani enters, I breathe a sigh of relief.

“What’s going on?” I ask him.

But he doesn’t respond. There’s a change in his demeanor. His shoulders are tenser. The line between his eyes deeper. There’s the start of a beard where there wasn’t one before.

He sits across from me and looks as if he’s debating confessing something. Something inside him must win, because he says to me, “I have a daughter, you know that? Different school.”

I realize he means we’re about the same age.

I realize he sees me as what could have been a predator to his baby girl.

Detective Tehrani stares me down, and I realize he’s lost something. Last time I saw him, there was hopefulness in his eyes. Now it looks like he knows better.

I lower my eyes to the table and think of Molly. Of what she’d do when I was nervous about something. I imagine her lifting my hand to her mouth and touching her lips to each fingertip. Then she’d wrap her hand around one of my fingers and squeeze. Then she’d do the next one, and the next one—thumb to pinkie, and back again. Over and over, and then…she’d skip one. It drove me crazy when she skipped squeezing one of my fingers. But the anticipation always took my mind off what plagued me. Instead, I’d focus on those steady squeezes. On the reassurance of her skin on mine. On the game.

I look down at my hand and wish, more than I’ve wished for anything in my entire life, that she would squeeze my fingers and that would be enough to make this all go away. I feel alone. I feel so fucking alone.

Detective Hernandez comes into the room, and I try to stand up against the restraints. I don’t know why. I’m desperate for anyone to remind me that I’m not a monster. But Detective Tehrani says, “Sit down,” in a gruff voice I didn’t know he had.

Detective Hernandez takes a seat across from me, and I follow her lead. She hasn’t shown the disgust for me that the other detective has yet, and so I look to her for guidance.

“Cobain,” she says with tiredness in her heavy brown eyes. “We’ve spoken with Jet about the day you met Molly.”

My eyes seal shut, and I force air through my nostrils.

“Sounded pretty violent, which is of course much different than the story you told us.”

I don’t respond. Nothing I say could help at this point.

Detective Hernandez leans back, like what she has up her sleeve next is even worse.

I can’t wait.

“We also talked to your former boss at…” She checks her notepad to ensure she gets it right. “…at Steel. It appears several hundred dollars went missing, and immediately after that, you were let go.”

I’m having trouble getting enough oxygen in this room. I think the walls are moving closer, the lights getting brighter. Am I imagining that? I have to be imagining that.